Here We Go: The South Carolina Primary of Resistance

GREENVILLE, S.C. — N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization Rules and (perhaps) Leader of the Civilizing Forces, is big on disenthrallment. Most of the literature shelled by his campaign contains this famous passage from Abraham Lincoln:

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

If we're going to consider what's gone on in South Carolina over the past couple of weeks, it's important to consider the historical context of the quote from Lincoln that Newt has decided to turn into his own personal campaign jingle. It comes from a message that Lincoln gave to the Congress on December 1, 1862, a month before he would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. The "dogmas of the quiet past" that had proven to be "inadequate to the stormy present" from which Lincoln said we must disenthrall ourselves in order to save the country — they consisted solely of the constitutional, political, and legal infrastructure that protected the institution of human slavery. An important part of that infrastructure was an interpretation and application of the 10th Amendment that differs from that proposed by Gingrich and every other remaining Republican candidate only in the fact that the Army of Northern Virginia is no longer around to shoot people in its defense. And now we know what a "historian" does at a boutique Beltway lobbying shop.

He dusts.

There is going to be a lot of talk after the primary is over here about how Iowa and New Hampshire really didn't count, and why South Carolina was the real test, and people will not pursue that line of thinking anywhere near as far as they should. In reality, the Republican primary electorate down here differs very little from the Republican primary electorate in those other two places. All three of them are white, fairly old, and thoroughly reactionary. But the Republican primary electorate in South Carolina is far more serious about everything that goes into being a Republican primary electorate in 2012, after nearly five decades of work has gone into fashioning what a genuine Republican primary electorate in 2012 should be.

All three groups are white, but South Carolinians are more serious about being white. All three groups are heavily influenced by the conservative splinters of evangelical Protestantism, but South Carolinians are more serious about being Christian. All three groups talk loosely about rolling back the New Deal, about minimizing the permanent impact of the Civil Rights Movement, and about loosening the limits of theocracy that were previously a matter of common agreement, but South Carolinians expect the candidates down here to deliver on this stuff. This is the Nullification primary. This is the Massive Resistance primary. This is the primary of old unsettled grudges. This is the primary where nothing and nobody ever is truly disenthralled.

Opinions that are on the fringe everywhere else are in the mainstream here. Issues long since settled are reopened regularly with the prybars of ancient prejudices. (Ron Paul, of all people, comes down here and blames Roe vs. Wade on the 1960's, and quotes John Adams on why the Beatles sent the country to hell in a bucket. Willard Romney, that old smoothie, yells at a heckler while appearing to be channelling Joe McCarthy.) There is no scar tissue down here, only scabs that open, over and over again.

Willard never really understood this. He never measured the depth of resentment down here and, inevitably, he found it turned against him and he drowned in it. He never saw the diamond-hard identity of the place as an actual opponent. They all came down here talking about the greatness of "America," but they were doing so in the historical home office of national division. In 1780, Tories in this part of the state handed the state back to the British. Fifty-odd years later, John C. Calhoun concocted a theory of American government that nearly came to guns over the tariff, and one that eventually did come to guns over the issue of owning human beings as property. South Carolina didn't ratify the constitutional amendment allowing women's suffrage until 1969. The state's sad history on racial desegregation need not be rehearsed here again, but it was a group of South Carolinians — most notably Harry Dent and, later, Lee Atwater — who invented the method of turning that resistance to racial integration into an anti-government paradigm that made the Republican party a dominant force for over 40 years. Willard Romney was remarkably blind to all of this. He never saw South Carolina as a singular place that is itself alone. He never saw it as anything more than another media market. Goddamn, was he ever wrong.

Now the Republican party must decide going forward if it is going to be defined by the unique circumstances of a South Carolina primary, if it will allow itself to be "disenthralled" from those things that are important to the national governing consensus elsewhere. It must decide if it will be the party of nullification, and not just in the Congress, but in the country as well. Early last evening, David Gregory on NBC speculated that a Gingrich win would prove that Republicans had decided that, "We need a really smart president."

If the rest of the country starts thinking like this, we might as well give Fort Sumter back. Nobody here is disenthralled, and they are so very proud of it.

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